Juárez was born on 21 March 1806, in a small adobe house in the village of San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca, located in the mountain range now known as the "Sierra Juárez". His parents, Brígida García and Marcelino Juárez, were Zapotec peasants and died of complications of diabetes when he was three years old. Shortly afterward, his grandparents died as well, so after that his uncle raised him.[4][5] He described his parents as "indios de la raza primitiva del país," that is, "Indians of the original race of the country."[5] He worked in the cornfields and as a shepherd until the age of 12, when he walked to the city of Oaxaca to attend school.[3] At the time, he could speak only Zapotec.

In the city, where his sister worked as a cook, he took a job as a domestic servant for Antonio Maza.[3] A lay Franciscan, Antonio Salanueva, was impressed with young Benito's intelligence and desire for learning, and arranged for his placement at the city's seminary. In 1843, Benito married Margarita Maza, the daughter of his sister's patron.

Juárez became a lawyer in 1834 and a judge in 1841.[6] He was governor of the state of Oaxaca from 1847 to 1852. During his tenure as governor, he supported the war effort against the Americans in the Mexican War, but seeing the war was lost, he refused Antonio López de Santa Anna's request to regroup and raise new forces. This, as well as his objections to the corrupt military dictatorship of Santa Anna, led to his exile in 1853.[7] He spent his exile in New Orleans, Louisiana, working in a cigar factory.[8] In 1854, he helped draft the Plan of Ayutla, a document calling for Santa Anna's deposition and a convention to implement a new constitution.

Faced with growing discontent, Santa Anna resigned in 1855 and Juárez returned to Mexico. The winning party, the liberales (Liberals), formed a provisional government under General Juan Álvarez, inaugurating the period known as La Reforma. The Reform laws sponsored by the puro (pure) wing of the Liberal Party curtailed the power of the Catholic Church and the military, while trying to create a modern civil society and capitalist economy based on the model of the United States. The Ley Juárez (Juárez Law) of 1855 declared all citizens equal before the law and severely restricted the privileges of the Catholic Church.

A new liberal constitution, the Constitution of 1857, was promulgated, under which Juárez became President of the Supreme Court of Justice, under moderado (moderate) president Ignacio Comonfort. Conservatives led by General Félix María Zuloaga, with the backing of the military and the clergy, launched a revolt under the Plan of Tacubaya on 17 December 1857. Comonfort sought to placate the rebels by appointing several conservatives to the Cabinet, dissolving the Congress, and implementing most of the Tacubaya Plan. Juárez, Ignacio Olvera, and many other deputies and ministers were arrested. The actions did not go far enough for the rebels, and on 11 January 1858, Zuloaga demanded Comonfort's resignation. Comonfort then re-established the Congress, liberated all prisoners and then resigned as President. The conservative forces proclaimed Zuloaga as President on 21 January.

Meanwhile, under the terms of the 1857 Constitution, the President of the Supreme Court of Justice became interim President of Mexico until a new election could be held. Juárez was thus acknowledged as president by liberals on 15 January 1858 and assumed leadership of the Liberal side of the civil war known as the Reform War (Guerra de Reforma).

As Zuloaga's men were in control of Mexico City, Juárez and his government fled, first to Querétaro and later to Veracruz, whose customs revenues were used to fund the government's expenditure. The Conservatives were supported by the Catholic Church (in 1859, during the war, Juárez ordered the confiscation of church properties) and the regular army, but the Liberals had the support of several state governments in the north and central-west and the administration of US President James Buchanan. A treaty between the two governments, the McLane-Ocampo Treaty was signed in December 1859, although Buchanan was unable to secure ratification of the treaty by the US Congress. Nevertheless, the aid received enabled the liberals to overcome the conservatives' initial military advantage; Juárez's government successfully defended Veracruz from assault twice during 1860 and recaptured Mexico City on 1 January 1861.

In March 1861, Juárez was finally elected President in his own right under the Constitution of 1857. However, the Liberals' celebrations of 1861 were short-lived. The war had severely damaged Mexico's infrastructure and crippled its economy. While the Conservatives had been defeated, they would not disappear, and the Juárez government had to respond to pressures from these factions. He was forced to give an amnesty to captured Conservative guerrillas still resisting the Juárez government even though they were executing captured Liberals, which included Melchor Ocampo. In view of the government's desperate financial straits, Juárez cancelled repayments of interest on foreign loans.

Spain, Britain and France, angry over unpaid Mexican debts, sent a joint expeditionary force that seized the Veracruz Customs House in December 1861. Spain and Britain soon withdrew after they realized that the French Emperor Napoleon III intended to overthrow the Juárez government and establish a Second Mexican Empire, with the support of the remnants of the Conservative side in the Reform War. Thus began the French intervention in Mexico in 1862.

Before Juárez fled, Congress granted him an emergency extension of his presidency, which would go into effect in 1865, when his term expired, and last until 1867, when the last of Maximilian's forces were defeated.

In response to the French invasion and the elevation of Maximilian, Juárez sent General Plácido Vega y Daza to California to gather Mexican American sympathy for Mexico's plight. Maximilian offered Juárez amnesty and later even the post of prime minister, but Juárez refused to accept a government "imposed by foreigners" or a monarchy. The government of the United States was sympathetic to Juárez, refusing to recognize Maximilian and opposing the French invasion as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, but it was distracted by the American Civil War. Following the end of the war, US President Andrew Johnson demanded the French evacuate Mexico and imposed a naval blockade in February 1866.

When Johnson could get no support in Congress, he allegedly had the Army "lose" some supplies (including rifles) "near" (across) the border with Mexico, according to U.S. General Philip Sheridan's journal account.[9][page needed]

Faced with US opposition to a French presence and a growing threat on the European mainland from Prussia, French troops began pulling out of Mexico in late 1866. Maximilian's liberal views cost him support from Mexican conservatives as well. In 1867, the last of the Emperor's forces were defeated and Maximilian was sentenced to death by a military court (a retaliation for Maximilian's earlier orders for the execution of republican soldiers). Despite national and international pleas for amnesty, Juárez refused to commute the sentence, and Maximilian was executed by firing squad on 19 June 1867 at Cerro de las Campanas in Querétaro. His last words had been "¡Viva México!" His body was returned to Austria for burial.

Juárez had no intention to leave power following the end of the French invasion. He won in a relatively clean manner the 1867 election and immediately requested and obtained special powers from Congress to rule by decree. Despite being forbidden to do so by the 1857 constitution, Juárez once again ran for re-election in 1871.

Amid fraud charges and widespread controversy, he was re-elected for a new term in 1871. During his last two terms, he used the office of the presidency to ensure electoral success, obtain personal gains and suppress revolts by opponents, such as Porfirio Díaz. Juárez died of a heart attack on July 18, 1872 while reading a newspaper at his desk in the National Palace in Mexico City. He was succeeded by Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, his foreign minister.

Sculpture of Juárez at Paseo Juárez a public park in the Historic Centre of Oaxaca. Juárez holds a Mexican flag with one hand and with the other is pointing at Maximilian's Crown which remains in the soil, representing the defeat of imperialism.

Today Benito Juárez is remembered as being a progressive reformer dedicated to democracy, equal rights for his nation's indigenous peoples, his antipathy toward organized religion, especially the Catholic Church (motivated by his adherence to Freemasonry),[10] and what he regarded as defense of national sovereignty. The period of his leadership is known in Mexican history as La Reforma del Norte (The Reform of the North), and constituted a liberal political and social revolution with major institutional consequences: the expropriation of church lands, the subordination of the army to civilian control, liquidation of peasant communal land holdings, the separation of church and state in public affairs, and also the almost-complete disenfranchisement of bishops, priests, nuns and lay brothers, codified in the "Juárez Law" or "Ley Juárez".[11]

Tomb of Benito Juárez.

La Reforma represented the triumph of Mexico's liberal, federalist, anti-clerical, and pro-capitalist forces over the conservative, centralist, corporatist, and theocratic elements that sought to reconstitute a locally-run version of the old colonial system. It replaced a semi-feudal social system with a more market-driven one, but following Juárez's death, the lack of adequate democratic and institutional stability soon led to a return to centralized autocracy and economic exploitation under the regime of Porfirio Díaz. The Porfiriato (Porfirist era), in turn, collapsed at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.

21 March is the set day to commemorate Juárez. This date has become a national holiday in Mexico, which has continued to grow in acceptance within Mexican culture.

On 7 February 1866, Juárez was elected as a companion of the 3rd class of the Pennsylvania Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS). While membership in MOLLUS was normally limited to Union officers who had served during the American Civil War and their descendants, members of the 3rd Class were civilians who had made a significant contribution to the Union war effort. Juárez is one of the very few non-United States citizens to be a MOLLUS companion.

A great number of cities, towns, streets, institutions, and other things are named after Benito Juárez, including the former El Paso del Norte, now called Ciudad Juárez; see Juárez (disambiguation) for a partial list.

Mexico City International Airport is better known in Mexico by its first official name Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez, or internationally often as Mexico City Juárez.

In the National Palace in Mexico, exists in what was his home during his regime, a museum in his honor. It takes the furniture and objects used; room, dining room, study and bedroom presidential shown in photographs.

From the time of Juárez, Mexico's government has issued several bills with the face and the subject of Juárez. In 2000, $20.00 (twenty pesos) bills, where on one side appears the bust of Juárez and to his left, the Juarista eagle across the Chamber, were published.

In Argentina, more precisely in the Province of Buenos Aires, there are the partido and city head Benito Juárez. It was founded in 1867 by Mariano Roldán and has nearly twenty thousand habitants. Two public high schools in the city carry Mexican flag symbols in their ceremonies and one of them has them imposed in the name of the institution.

Juárez's famous quotation continues to be well-remembered in Mexico: "Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz", meaning "Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace". The portion of this motto in bold is inscribed on the coat of arms of Oaxaca.

"The law has always been my shield and my sword" is a phrase often reproduced as decoration inside court and tribunals buildings.[citation needed]